Using the waitlist

How guests join

When your booking page has nothing to offer for a date and party size, it shows Join the waitlist instead of an empty list. A guest who joins is told You're on the waitlist and leaves their details.

They are waiting for a specific date and a specific party size — not for “sometime”. That is what makes the list worth working: everyone on it has already told you what they want.

Working the list

The Waitlist screen shows one day at a time, with the same date controls as the book.

Two things happen from here:

• A cancellation notifies people automatically. When a booking is cancelled or marked a no-show, the table it frees goes back into availability and waiting guests are emailed.
• You can notify anyone by hand with Notify by email — for the table you have just decided to squeeze in, or the party you would particularly like to have back.

If someone is no longer waiting, Remove takes them off. A tidy list is one you will actually look at on the next busy Friday.

What it does not do

• No SMS. Waitlist notifications go by email, like everything else.
• It reacts to cancellations, not to settings. If you free space by changing your pacing caps or adding a table, nobody on the waitlist is told. Notify them by hand after a change like that — the system is watching the book, not your settings.